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Amiga Trombone sends this quote from the beginning of a story at Bloomberg:
"President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the US's civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China. Obama's transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency's planned launch vehicle, which isn't slated to fly until 2015, according to people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team."

With the equity markets down over 32% last year and the economy still deeply intrenched in a deflationary correction, buying any "stock" right now without a large and reliable dividend is not wise

Well, I'm a big fan of buying dividend stocks, so I won't argue with you on that one, but I think your wrong about it being unwise to buy non-dividend stocks. You want to buy stocks when the prices are low. I'm actually loving this period -- I'm not gonna retire for 30+ years and this is a great time to be buying shares at dirt cheap prices.

Sucks for the people who were going to retire soon but if they were going to retire next year why the hell did they have so many investments in equities? If I was cl

Sucks for the people who were going to retire soon but if they were going to retire next year why the hell did they have so many investments in equities?

That's a good question. The general answer is that most retired investors need their portfolio to generate a return at least equal to inflation, over time. Historically cash has a negative return after inflation and bonds are maybe break-even at best. But last year all that went out the window. Stocks have had a 1-year negative return that's almost unprecedented and even high-grade bonds have taken a hit. Plus markets over the world are down, not just the U.S. So, while generally cash is a bad place to be, long-term, last year nothing else was any good. That still doesn't mean, though, that you should keep your nest egg under the mattress: over the long term you'll see no net growth and your retirement income will shrink, net inflation.

As long as you don't have more than the FDIC insured amount in any one bank, it's an EXTREMELY safe investment (even if there are rumors of your bank going under)... Safer than cash under your mattress, in fact. While interest rates weren't high this past year, by any means, (historic lows, really) it was easily better than the ZERO ret

You want a bit of inflation though, exactly because it encourages people to invest instead of sit on their money. If money is constantly being sucked out of the system for savings so does economic activity. Whereas if you take somebodies savings and put it into something with a known return, like building a port or a power station, then you've achieved economic growth at the same time as providing savings.

The problem is that it became too hard to figure out what really had a "known return" and what didn't,

So because prices haven't bounced back in a few months, you think the strategy is wrong?

Not necessarily, but, buying on "the dips," as amateurs and people like yourself have been conditioned to do (by institutions who stand to gain, whether you win or lose) in what turns out to be a long downward movement, is like catching razor blades falling out of the sky. It might not hurt much at first, or even later, but sooner or later you bleed to death.

I have a couple things to share. I'm a decade older than you, and wished I had know what you have expressed so far when I was your age so good for you! I've also learned a few other things which might help you.

First, an answer to your question: the reason I would choose the 30-year mortgage over the 15-year mortgage is that the payment is lower, so if I've fallen on hard times one month and can make the lower payment but not the higher payment, then I'm ahead. (Of course times could be so toug

$150,000 borrowed at 6% for 30 years = $173,757 in interest expense and a monthly payment of $899.33
$150,000 borrowed at 6% for 15 years = $77,841 in interest expense and a monthly payment of $1,265.79

You increase your payment by 40.7% percent in exchange for paying the loan off in half the time and only paying 44.7% as much interest.

In reality it would actually be a bit better than that because a 15 year typically has a lower interest rate. As far as not being able to afford

Again, nice calculations. I haven't bothered to look into them as such. Perhaps that sounds presumptuous.

I'd just like to warn you slightly. Odds are you have not considered the time-value of money in your calculations. It's a common enough error and I won't try to go into detail too much here. I'm just noting it for your own (and others) benefit. Suffice it to say that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. By paying off a loan faster you are paying it off with more expensive dollars (the ear

Source? Everything I've seen shows record industrial output [economagic.com] prior to the recent economic downturn. What indication do you have of a reversal in this long-term trend?

-High school graduations and the overall literacy is down the tubes.

Once again, the data that I could find [childtrendsdatabank.org] contradicts your claim. Why do you think any recent spike in dropouts is anything other than a temporary aberration in the larger trend?

-The Baby Boomers are about to retire.

That was certainly the case a few months ago, but the stock market crash took care of that problem. The evaporation of so much wealth has pushed out retirement [cnn.com] for a lot of boomers.

-The 50+ trillion National Debt (by 2020) needs to be paid, or at least serviced, which means much higher taxes (and much more job loss)

First of all, remember that even with low inflation $50 billion in 2020 is likely to be worth about $38 billion in today's dollars. Second, I find it hard to believe that people will continue to loan the US that much cheap money. If we run up that much debt, it will almost certainly cause high inflation. Cash would be a very bad position to be in with high inflation, as would bonds. If you have the stomach for commodities, they would probably weather inflation pretty well. So where would you suggest putting money in a high-inflation situation? Personally, I'm going for real estate pretty soon. But like I said, equities seem fairly well-priced right now, too.

And what do you think Obama can do?

Not much - the fed has pretty much blown its wad. The best I can hope for is that he spends all of this debt money on infrastructure, so that we at least get something lasting out of the political stunt called "stimulus".

Do you think his voodoo reaganomics will spend us out of trouble?

Reaganomics was usually applied to "trickle-down" theory, which isn't really what Obama is proposing. Nevertheless, any stimulus isn't going to change the broad direction of the economy, but it might take the edge off. The government is a lot bigger than it was during the depression, so don't try to compare government action then and now.

If I were you, I'd convert your stocks into gold and get the hell out of here.

Gold is way too erratic for me. If I had been a really smart guy and seen the stock crash coming in late september, I might have transferred to gold. Unfortunately, the price of gold crashed along with the stock market (after an initial spike). Now, it has since recovered - so if I held on to it I'd be fine, but no better off than if I'd stayed in cash. And who knows what it will do tomorrow? It's varied by roughly 15-20% in just the last month or so.

I agree with 98% of what you say except for buying on rumors. The stock market is nothing but rumors and speculation. The reason Gas prices went to four dollars? wasn't because production was hit, or refineries went down, but because of rumors and speculation.

It will do so again and again. At the moment not so much when things are going good again rumors will be the only thing of true value in the stock market. Without buying on Rumor there is no stock market. people don't invest in companies and lead

The day-traders do. The ones who buy stocks and hold onto it for decades (ie, the smart folks) don't have so much of an impact on the day-to-day price swings, and are far more likely to profit in spite of times like this.

Another way to look at it: buy as much as you can. Either this cycle will will end and you'll come out a wealthy person in a few decades - or the economy will completely collapse, and we're all screwed anyway.

My interpretation of the article is not that Obama will want DoD staff to help manage NASA projects, but rather he wants NASA to be able to use already developed DoD rocket technology (which is now too classified for NASA to use). Since it's already developed, the over-budget and over-time has already been paid for....

Please read up on this. The "military technology" (that is, the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets) is owned by the United Launch Alliance, a spin off from Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The DoD does not own any part of the ULA. NASA already uses [wikipedia.org] Atlas V launches for some of its space probes (New Horizons probe to Pluto and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). And numerous commercial satellites have been launched on the Atlas V.

finally... a good idea from the Obama camp, I was praying for at least one - now they will be able to use the cover of black military programs to protect their funding streams. Time to to get back in the space business

Although the DoD is not just military. The NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency are both in the DoD, and they are civilian (to be fair, the DIA also employs military and the NSA is headed up by a military officer). Not to mention the head of the DoD is a civilian.

There is also the National Security Council (10 out of 11 in the Council are non-military). Also, the President (a civilian) is the head of the military.

I understand your concern, but we tore down the wall between civilian and military a long time ago.

Well that's the point of the factionalisation and faux-rivalry of US politics, isn't it? To get people so divided into their allegiance to a party name that you can then pull the same shit with either party and only 50% of the people will complain whilst the rest are obliged to rationalise it somehow.

truth be known - NASA and the DoD have had a pretty close relation ship over the years - in fact virtually all the planetary exploration missions have been launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station - the only pads operating from Kennedy Space Center proper are the shuttle pads. There have also been DoD specific missions on the space shuttle and on past Skylab missions. I think the move to put the space program under DoD auspices would serve more to share engineering, management, etc. as well as put t

they are attempting to make this an equivalent of the war in Iraq. Which is just plain stupid. Essentially the point the parent to my post is making (ambiguously) is "Bush invaded Iraq and everyone bitched, but Obama is doing 'military stuff' like associating NASA and DOD and he gets a free pass."

Your parent did not say that:

Well that's the point of the factionalisation and faux-rivalry of US politics, isn't it? To get people so divided into their allegiance to a party name that you can then pull the same shit with either party and only 50% of the people will complain whilst the rest are obliged to rationalise it somehow.

I'm afraid Kagura has it right. I am the parent poster and you've read into my post something that isn't quite there. I simply observed that getting the people of the US factionalised into two groups allows you to pull the same shit with either party and you don't get more than 50% resistance to it because people feel obliged to defend their side. Every time a Democrat or Republican politician does something bad, they get vigorously attacked by the supporters of the other faction. But the attacks usually e

you do realize the majority of NASA commanders and pilots are military personnel right?

While Nasa is civilian missions have to be approved and cleared by the airforce before launch. NASA is a way for the airforce to get even more money for R&D out of the government while making it look good.

He wasn't "partisan whining" (as far as I can tell). He was just observing the lack of complaints and guessing that there would be a lot greater suspicion and condemnation if Bush had done this. And I think it's fair to say he's right. That doesn't mean that it would be better or worse if the Republicans had done this.

The fact that there would be greater suspicion if Bush had tried to do this does in no way interfere with the fact that there would have been good reason to be more suspicious if Bush had attempted it.

It's equally "suspicious" -- or non-suspicious -- regardless of who does it. Someday someone you distrust is going to be in power, and they're going to have at their disposal all the tools that are being created now. If you're OK with that, then I guess this is a good move. If you're not, it isn't.

And who gives a shit, anyhow? Military weapons are the 'killer app' of space. We're going to get absolutely nowhere by attempting to convince people to "throw away" money on boring ass research "for the good of mankind." But just convince some generals that the next big thing is building huge space weapons platforms and spacecraft to counter the Chinese threat, and suddenly you'll have billions of dollars being poured into aerospace propulsion, ship design, etc. Sure, war is bad. But here we sit on this big rock, with a rapidly growing population and diminishing resources. What happens when the population gets too big and the resources are too few? What happens when someone accidently launches an ICBM and every nation on Earth follows suit? What if a huge meteor strikes? Humans are always going to be competitive and war-like. Let's bring the war out into space, develop new technologies in the process, start getting people off this rock, and deflate tensions here on Earth.

What this is starting to look like is the DoD grabbing a chunk of NASA's budget for their secret programs. We might never get to the moon this way, but lots of Star Wars hardware will get built on NASA's dime.

Mil spec hammers don't cost $500. They cost $20, just like at Home Depot. The other $480 dissapears into a black ops project.

finally... a good idea from the Obama camp, I was praying for at least one

Yes, FINALLY a good idea. It's been so long since he took the oh-so powerful office of "president elect," it's about time he started using that office to govern rather than setting up the transition. It's high time he started using his constitutional powers as almost-president to do some good.

No, they are a separate branch (ie the USMC was authorised by congress, not just a creation of the USN), they are administratively overseen by the Department of the Navy (which isn't the same as the US Navy).

First, the USMC is not a military branch. It is subordinate to the Navy.

The Coast Guard is not a military force, per se. It could be considered one, but as far as I know, it isn't readily considered one of the military branches (though it is 1 of the 7 uniformed services). They do not regularly conduct or share the operations of the military, and are therefore usually not included (they're a law enforcement organization). Though, I suppose

USCG is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and not currently part of the DoD since we are actually at "war".

The USCG was also transfered from the Department of Transportation and not Commerce on the creation of the DHS.

It is also considered one of the five (5) armed services under the US Code with the Marines as well (even though the Marines are administrated under the Department of the Navy due to historical reasons).

The military and Nasa have always had a relationships; choosing astronauts from the ranks of the Air Force, for one. Obviously, the technology developed through the space program has military applications such as spy satellites and obviously a rocket that can put a man in orbit can just as easily deliver a multi-ton warhead to the other side of the planet. What worries me in this plan is shifting the focus from science to defense objectives.

While NASA has a long relationship with the military and shares plenty of technology, they are a civilian organization. I know that up until recently, NASA's mission was, "To understand and protect our home planet...", but the main focus has been to send interplanetary probes [nasa.gov] into the solar system, bust up comets [nasa.gov] and generally produce outstanding backgrounds for our desktops [nasaimages.org]. Would this shift in leadership take more energy away from studying the nature of the universe, lofting the next generation of space telescopes and studying our planet from above? Under the military it seems more likely that NASA's goals would shift away from "understanding" and more to "protecting". I imagine this wold involve developing the next generation of anti-satellite and anti-anti-satellite weapons (despite the fact that earth orbit is supposed to be a weapons free zone [wikipedia.org]).

What insight does the slashdot community have on this? Will shifting NASA to military control result in a more nimble and focused organization able to achieve the goal of putting a man on mars in the next 20 years, or will military research take precedence over science?

What worries me in this plan is shifting the focus from science to defense objectives.

Don't see why. Defense objectives are valuable. Space science is far less so. That's the primary reason that the DoD receives something like 20 to 50 times the funding that NASA receives. I think the concern here about NASA becoming, under an Obama administration, a subordinate program to the DoD is completely outlandish.

What I think is the real driver for this idea is that the DoD often has to do part of NASA's job in order to sucessfully pursue defense objectives in space. A key example is space launch. S

The EELVs are specified by the military, but they aren't military vehicles. They are made to order by the United Launch Alliance (ULA) which is jointly owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The reason is man-rated products versus launch-rated products. The EELVs are launch-rated, meaning for cargo only. NASA products used for the STS are man-rated, requiring significantly higher costs to develop than launch-rated products. The solid fuel booster and external fuel tanks are already man-rated systems and require far less cost to convert to the Ares system than converting launch-rated EELV systems to man-rated systems.So, NASA went with proven systems to keep costs and development times to a minimum. It's my opinion that trying to convert to the EELVs would put NASA at least another 4-5 years behind the current timeline.

The myth of "man-rating" rears its ugly head. As I understand it, there are two primary parts of this nebulous criteria. First, every part of the flight has to have a survivable (though not necessarily injury-free) abort option. The second is that the acceleration profile can't be too harsh. This has implications for the e

The difference is what it is used for. A satellite built by Lockeed Martin that observes gamma ray bursts is definitely scientific; a satellite that watches the comings and goings of North Korea is different kind of "science." I'd rather have the DoD/military/whoever worry about spying and NASA focus on science.

I like the story of gamma rays first being detected because we were looking for evidence of the Soviets using Nukes on the Moon [spacedaily.com]. DoD projects that help develop tech for NASA projects could be a good thing.

As long as they don't start developing plans for bringing liberty to the hydrocarbon rich [universetoday.com] populace of Titan.

Altruistic as the space race may seem, China will soon be a much larger influence in the world than today. Currently, their middle class is larger than the entire population of the USA, and the rest of the population is catching up fast.

If they have a well developed space program, it's all the more leverage if they start to flex their muscles. You can bet their bureaucracy knows of the military benefits of space. Everyone and their mother already has surveillance satellites up. The US government wants a powerful presence up there as well.

The race for power is underpinning this race for space, just as it did in the time of Sputnik. Only this time, bankrupting China (like the US bankrupt the USSR) doesn't seem to be an option.

[quote]China is no competition, because the hidebound nature of its corrupt "Communist" government is catching up on it. From the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace last month: "Runaway corruption in China poses a lethal threat to the nation's economic development and 'undermines the legitimacy of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.'" [/quote]
Which is nothing like what we have here in the U.S.

I'm pretty ignorant on this subject, and not a US national, but wouldn't this be a rather good way to eliminate redundancy in similar projects across both agencies at a time when the US needs to rationalise expenditure?

What's maddening is that nobody involved in this debate seems to realize that:

1. We solved resonance and pogoing issues in the 1960s vis-a-vis the Saturn V stack.

2. We can simply dust off the Apollo 18-20 J-series mission plans and the Apollo X/ALSS/AES/LESA studies, and execute them.

3. All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.

4. SRBs are insanely dangerous due to their non-throttalability, and should not be man-rated beyond the poorly-designed Shuttle stack.

We knew all this *more than 40 years ago* (we ignored the SRB issue back then, which led directly to Challenger); how can these people be so ignorant?!

Here's a link [si.edu] to just a few of the studies which were done of follow-on missions. Here are links to Apollo X [astronautix.com], ALSS [astronautix.com], AES [astronautix.com], and LESA [astronautix.com].

Stephen Baxter's Voyage [amazon.com] is an interesting alternate history based upon some of these mission plans (although he's way too hard on the Germans, IMHO).

The bottom line - if NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.

Those stacks would be even more useful for unmanned payloads, and unlike NASA the military is getting very good at understanding machines should go on dangerous places instead of people.

We only need to send people to the moon to explore and exploit it. We can explore and exploit it remotely and get more missions up. Getting meat in space isn't urgently required to learn what is out there.The longevity of the Mars Rovers is yet more proof of this.

While I agree with your conclusions, we can't just dust off the Saturn designs and reimplement them. For one, we don't have all the details. Some of them have been lost. For another, you'd have to redo a lot of things anyway -- do you really want to be using Apollo-era electronics? If you did, where would you get them? It would make sense to update the alloys used, at which point you have to recheck all the design parameters.

Of course, I'm all in favor of building an all-liquid rocket that focuses on r

You're very right about the tech advances making it a bad idea, but not so right about the details of the Saturn Vs. We have the blueprints and, for most of the esoteric bits, actual examples "lying around". It wouldn't be easy, but it'd be doable.

All we need to actually get back to the Moon is a Saturn V stack updated with newer materials and automation technologies.

I share your admiration for the Saturn V. But re-creating it is not the best idea.

According to Henry Spencer, the blueprints for the Saturn V still exist, but much of the undocumented extra knowledge was in fact lost. The skilled machinists who knew how to turn those designs into working parts are long retired or dead; the special heat treatments needed to make some of the alloys are forgotten; etc.

And, as another poster noted in this thread, if you did build a Saturn V it would have 1960's electronics.

If you say "but we will just update the alloys and electronics" then it isn't really a Saturn V anymore, and it will need to be re-tested and re-engineered. In which case, you might as well have started from a clean sheet of paper.

Also, the Saturn V was our answer to the problem of getting boots on the moon as fast as possible. I'd prefer to see the problem of moon travel solved correctly, which IMHO means making it easier and faster to mount expeditions, and making it possible to send larger payloads. This means I want to see a cheap, really reusable orbital vehicle; a space station suitable for staging moon missions; an Earth-moon spacecraft, assembled in space, that was never designed to land on Earth or the moon; and reusable moon landing vehicles.

Every time you use a Saturn V to go to the moon, you destroy one Saturn V. That's expensive, and it doesn't scale well. If we have a reliable "pickup truck" that can carry a small payload to orbit, then do it again in less than a week, we can send up the crew and supplies for a moon mission.

With the Saturn V, our astronauts lived inside a little tin can for a few days, then returned. I'd like to see an actual moon base sent over in pieces, and see people living on the moon for months at a time (and doing science the whole time).

Cheap, reliable, routine flights to orbit change the whole game. Instead of repeating the space race, let's build an infrastructure and go to space to stay.

(far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth)

Yes, yes, yes!! And make that prize tax-free while you are at it. And put a smaller prize for second place. These prizes would be cheap if someone succeeds, and if no one succeeds we would pay nothing. It's better than paying cost plus contracts to aerospace contractors.

If NASA want to go back to the Moon (far better to offer a $20B X-Prize for the first organization to put 30 men on the Moon for a year and a day, and return them safely to Earth), all they have to do is to start building modernized Saturn Vs, Apollo CMs, SMs, & LMs.

Just about anything would be better than continuing with the Ares program using bastardized space shuttle technology which was itself highly specialized for the peculiarities of the Space Shuttle which in turn is probably the most unusual launch configuration ever flown with people aboard. It seems that NASA always tries to save money by stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. They made that mistake with the Space Shuttle program and they are all set to make it again with the Ares program. The SpaceX guys

Common misconception about the Saturn V. The plans and resources are still there.

That said, given the changes in technology since then, you're right--it doesn't make sense. But the idea that we don't have the data necessary to build a Saturn V if we need to is a joke. It would not be easy, but there are examples and/or blueprints for, quite literally, everything in one of those.

I don't see what the big deal is. NASA and DoD have worked togeather before (Shuttle program but DoD dropped out for non-manned launches).
This is not about militarization of NASA (DoD's space budget is significantly more than NASA), if it's cheaper for NASA to adopt or modify one of the heavy launchers used by the DoD, than why not ? What raised my eye brow was Griffin's response about NASA's inability to evaluate rocket options....

I've always suspected that the military has an active and advanced manned space program. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I do have a soft spot for dreaming about all the cool stuff the military could create in 40 years with trillions of dollars and little oversight.

Why would we spend so much money in the 50's, 60's and 70's then essentially abandon space for short trips orbiting the planet, and relatively cheap robotic missions elsewhere. At the same time having military spend 100 times as much as NASA on t

It probably just means using the same launch compatibilities. The US Military relies heavily on ULA [wikipedia.org], an umbrella company for Boeing and Lockheed Martin, for doing it's launches. The Delta IV [wikipedia.org] could probably fill this role if rated for manned launches - which should be expensive by itself, I presume.

I'm not entirely sure whether Obama will actually pursue this, but I notice a trend going on.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like every time any idea is discussed, the press seems to make the assumption that the Obama administration is actually going to pursue it (and unmodified). Are they just not use to the idea of actual discussion about choices?

...that the military hasn't been running a black budget man in space program right along all this time. Their budget is huge compared to nasa, and right in the article, they have heavy lift rockets perfectly good for the task. And who's to say they don't have a two stage to orbit rocket plane or hybrid scramjet/rocket whatever dropped from a mothership already? Like they are going to brag about this, or we take it as gospel that they just stopped developing black budget advanced flying craft 40-50 years ago? The last one they finally fessed up to is the B2, we are now being made to believe they just gave that sort of research and deployment up? Really? They just stopped? And look at the near hysterical fit they went into when that dude in england hacked into some servers and he claims he found evidence of *just that*, a running black budget military manned space program. They want that guy shut up, locked away for the rest of his life in the US. Why? He didn't do anything but look, no damages, seems like a two year sentence or something like that is his native country would be sufficient, but nope, they went into serious overdrive to get him extradited.

Don't dismiss the thought out of hand. My guess is, because I have yet to see any evidence that they have given up black budget advanced aeronautical research, is that we had the technology for man in space a long time ago now, and the military just kept doing it, with the nasa efforts beng the public misdirection effort to keep focus elsewhere for deniability purposes, They just got better at burying stuff inside the black budgets.

Space is the high ground, no way in hell would they NOT want that advantage, including having humans up there and a way to quickly get them up and back. There's another guy out there who has been imaging rather large and pretty secret orbital craft, I don't have the url handy but I have seen his pics, those are some really large spacecraft, some of they completely large enough to hold a small crew.

It is entirely possible that they have given this stuff up. Keep in mind that the B2 was fairly close to being done by the time that Clinton came in. Clinton cut the military's budget by a fair amount, and black budget stuff is the easiest to cut (by definition, not very many people needs to know about it)It is somewhat doubtful that Bush can afford to keep funding these things, considering the wars that he is fighting, and the high tech planes he is funding. In any case, the military is hardly in desperate

The DOD black budget is over 30 billion per annum now, as of 2007 figures I just looked at. Do you know what is in it? I don't. And it has been in the billions going all the way back, so add it up, half a trillion and change over the past few decades. That's enough to keep a little advanced space R and D going in there some place. Nasa for 2008 is 17 billion, and I would presume that any black budget efforts in space wouldn't have to be totally sourced within the black budget, a whole lot of the tech that c

I can see why it is tempting to try and save some money - although when has the military ever had savings and synergy in their target? But it is always a very bad idea to mix military and civilian institutions. The military WILL try to take over, claiming that it is now all state secrets, and that will not benefit the people, or space science - proper science can't be conducted in secret, there must be free exchange of theory, regardless of national interests.

Except as otherwise provided in this section, the Federal Government
shall acquire space transportation services from United States
commercial providers whenever such services are required in the course
of its activities. To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal
Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation
services capabilities of United States commercial providers.

You give a bunch of people a bunch of cars, you're going to get a lot of car trips. You give a bunch of people a bunch of TVs, you've going to get a lot of consumption of entertainment. You give a bunch of people a bunch of guns, you're going to get a lot of shootings. It really is that simple.

Actually more people are killed in automobile accidents than accidental shootings but I'm guessing you really don't care about facts and are only interested in pushing your gun-control agenda. Hell the TV is probably more deadly than the firearms when you account for the fact that 1/3'rd of this country is morbidly obese. Your "lot's of shootings" argument has been dispelled by every single state that has passed shall-issue [wikipedia.org] legislation. 38 states in the Union allow it -- funny how we haven't managed to m

The whole reason the Space Transportation System (STS, or just "space shuttle") looks the way it does is entirely due to now-defunct military requirements. When they were designing the shuttle, the DoD had a requirement to be able to place a payload in polar orbit and return to Earth in one orbit, in order to "secretly" deploy spy satellites. This is hard. No, really, this is very hard. The earth is spinning "sideways" and it takes a tremendous amount of impulse (read: fuel) to change your orbit from sideways to vertical. Then you have to land again.

NASA, dutiful organization that it was, came up with the idea of "tacking" the orbiter on the side. And they gave it wings. This was the only way they could get the crew-carrying module to safely glide back to its original destination.

About 5 years into the design, the DoD said, "No, thanks, we don't want that system anymore," and left NASA holding the bag. So, we're stuck with this design where the re-entry surface is exposed to the outside during launch (nobody else does that). The engines on the orbiter remain the highest energy-dense engines ever developed.

Keep in mind that the only reason the military got involved was because NASA couldn't come up with the funding on its own for a Space Shuttle-sized RLV. If NASA had scaled back the ambitions of the Shuttle (for which they already knew they didn't have the demand), they wouldn't have needed the military money and wouldn't have had to make the design compromises that they did. And the DoD was left holding the bag when NASA went into CYA mode for a couple of years following the Challenger accident. Military satellites need to be launched on the DoD's schedule, not when NASA feels like it.

I was already concerned about his wanting to send more troupes to Afghanistan, but now this????

Umm, Afghanistan != Iraq. You do remember why we are over there, right?

The government always needs a boogeyman to keep us off-balance. The cold war with Russia carried it for a while.

I don't think the populations of the countries that were effectively annexed by the Soviet Union thought of them as a mere bogeyman. The Cold War came about when the Soviet Union refused to honor her wartime agreements and decided to annex Eastern Europe. It didn't come about because our Government needed a bogeyman to distract the population.

but this demonization will only hurt relations

So we should turn the other check when they oppress human rights and just keep doing business with them as usual?

Also, keep in mind that China already has the US by its financial balls in a very assymetrical fashion, and I'm not sure what that would portend. But it does give China a lot of leverage over the US.

How do they have us by the 'financial balls'? They could dump their holdings of US Treasuries and pull the rug out from under that market -- but that would hurt them (and the rest of the World for that matter) at least as badly as it would hurt us. They have 400,000,000 people they need to pull out of poverty. That isn't gonna happen if they undermine their biggest trading relationship.

I had always told everyone to keep eyes on China, for they would become the next rival of the US in the 21st century

They may well become our rival. We'll see. We aren't without our own strengths and they aren't without weakness though. We might see a different World in the 21st century but we'll still be around.

keep an eye on the relationship between Russia and China, as I suspect they will become strong allies in the years and decades to come

It's just as likely they'll become rivals as it is they will become allies. Either way, it's part of the geopolitical game. We're laying the foundation for a future relationship with India. Think India might be a useful counterweight to China?

The government always needs a boogeyman to keep us off-balance. The cold war with Russia carried it for a while.

I don't think the populations of the countries that were effectively annexed by the Soviet Union thought of them as a mere bogeyman. The Cold War came about when the Soviet Union refused to honor her wartime agreements and decided to annex Eastern Europe.

Funny, but it is not how it is remembered in those countries. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Betrayal [wikipedia.org] .
It was Roosvelt and Churchill who sold whole Central and Eastern Europe to Stalin in Yalta.
'Refusal to honor wartime agreements' is just an attempt to rewrite history.

trading spending with bullets for rocket boosters is the chapter I must have missed in "Obamanomics"

from TFA: "Obamas transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agencys planned launch vehicle,"

The idea is to SAVE MONEY. Whether that works out or not, we'll see. And as for "trading bullets for rockets", first that seems an excellent idea to me, but also Iraq is costing upwards of 300 billion last I heard; whatever NASA gets is pocket change compared to that.